Staying the Course: Clean Energy Within the New Politcal Realities

Washington, D.C., United States –
As the political theater in Washington, DC reaches new heights, I believe we should be thoughtful of what the clean energy community should expect, act, and stand for. Already certain leaders of the national renewable energy and efficiency associations have publicly stated they would accept the inclusion of coal and nuclear in a "National Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard" or a "National Clean Energy Standard."

Now let’s forget for a minute that it is highly unlikely we will see significant legislation of any kind in the next two years of this pre-Presidential race cycle. But why would anyone who cares about clean energy stake out such a position so early or state such a position at all?

Since a portion of my work is for the Department of Defense and the respective services, packaging our assets as it relates to “mission” is very important. That said, in my speeches and teaching seminars for military audiences, I layout the assets of high value energy efficiency and renewable energy:

Flat energy rates – predictability

No interruptible energy by either terrorists, political players and cartels, human error, acts of nature, or aging infrastructure

And that brings me to the point of this article: While it is fine to repackage or reconfigure our assets to play our strengths — it would be a sad mistake to dilute our assets for short term political gain.

The leaders of the child labor or civil rights movements didn’t compromise and say “some children can be allowed to work in factories and sweatshops” or “some minorities can be discriminated against.” And neither should we regarding national policies towards creating a portfolio of clean, domestic technologies for our fuels, electricity and thermal energy.

I hate to put my professor hat on, but excuse me, how is coal clean? Even if you could sequester carbon, it emits mercury, carcinogens, requires much water, emits other greenhouse gases, leaves us with coal ash waste piles, and drives the blowing-up of our mountain tops ruining waterways and farmland.

Nuclear energy, with its multi-thousand year wastes, imported uranium, and susceptibility to terrorism is another ploy to re-label non-renewable technologies and ooze them into our brand. This reminds me how the high fructose corn syrup industry has recently relabeled itself the “corn sugar” industry or how the food processing industry is fighting labeling requirements so that consumers might infer that they are “organic.”

Our brand — that we are domestic, clean, renewable and solve multiple problems — is what makes us worth it, frankly at almost any price. Just because we subsidize the conventional energy industries to the tune of $60 - $135 billion per year, depending whose statistics you look at, and do not monetize their external issues relating to water, land use and the environment doesn’t make them cheaper — it only makes them appear less expensive.

So the point of this missive is that we need to be “comfortable in our own skin,” and understand that there are ups and downs in politics. We should remind ourselves that we have many Republican and Democratic supporters, and most importantly, that according to every national poll, the public loves clean energy compared to any other conventional option.

We also need to be vigilant in addressing those who are posturing and deriding clean technologies for their short term political gain. One senior House member recently held up an incandescent light bulb and publicly declared how he will fight their ban implying the folly of CFLs and LEDS. While I know and respect the Congressman, in my recent speech in his home State of Texas, I responded by saying, “while I admire this member in many ways, his statement is beyond reason — why would anyone who loves this country want us to expend 75-90% more energy in lighting causing us to divert capital for economic growth towards feeding wasteful energy habits?” We should not acquiesce to taunts that are untrue about any clean technology — standing and watching does us no service.

So my advice to those national clean energy leaders who are stampeding to compromise for minimal gains is to “chill.” Our industries are scaling, attracting over $300 billion of private capital globally, enjoying over 90 percent public approval, and addressing several of our most critical national problems.

And to all of us: be resolute about our industries’ value towards our country’s future and that of our planet — we are absolutely essential. Diluting this message or our benefits is folly, for “we” are the future. Happy New Year.

Scott Sklar runs the Washington, DC-based The Stella Group, Ltd., which is a strategic technology optimization and policy firm for clean distributed energy users and companies. Sklar is an Adjunct Professor at the George Washington University teaching a unique multi-disciplinary sustainable energy course that began in September 2010. On November 4, 2010 Secretary Locke approved Sklar’s appointment to the Department of Commerce Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee (RE&EEAC). Sklar can be reached at solarsklar@aol.com.

11 Comments

I agree with Scott and we need more visionary's of his kind. Thanks, Scott for taking an important stand and not selling out to the big corporate lobbies!

Now is the time for transformation from fossil/coal/nuclear. Renewable's time has come. It wins out over all other energy forms. Using renewable creates far more jobs here locally and in all US communities. The biggest and most important impact is that it "empowers the citizens giving them meaningful work, pride in there communities, while creating hundreds of new business's and opportunities across America."
Coal and nuclear do not provide opportunities in all communities and have the many risks as Scott so amptly pointed out. Its time to create opportunities for all America and not just big industry. Look at what just happened with the big banks and the financial crises...
Mark

ANONYMOUS
January 11, 2011

The anonymous author of comment #8 writes:
"I'd feel more secure with his (Scotts) overview than that of our seeming resident nit-pickers. "

Most people would not call factor of 10 discrepancies "nits". Nor would they consider using figures summed over a 33 year period as if they were annual values a small error. Hopefully some people will start reading the full reports because they are very often misquoted in overview articles presented on this site and in the mass media. In an ideal situation REW would employ a fact checker to thin out some of the mistakes and undocumented claims.
Steven

ANONYMOUS
January 11, 2011

@StephenLacey and comment 9:

Thanks! The reference Scott gave you is to an earlier article of his. It includes this paragraph:

"In September 2005, the U.S. Government General Accounting office issued a letter on petroleum subsidies estimates by both the Congressional Joint Tax Committee (JTC) and the U.S. Department of Treasury (DofTreas):"

I found a year 2000 GAO letter that contains the exact figures that Scott quotes in his article. It can be obtained here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00301r.pdf

Scott quotes lots of numbers in his article but what ISN'T said is that these are totals for for periods as long as 1968-2000. The letter breaks down the data year by year and it is easy to sum the numbers for the year 2000 alone. The GAO number is $1.51 Billion dollars and the JTC number is 2.49 Billion dollars. Thus, the data Scott pointed you to don't make his case of claims of 60-135 Billion dollars per year. In fact, these numbers are low end estimates compared to more traditional sources such as the EIA or the rather highly padded numbers of the ELI (an environmental group rather than a government agency) mentioned by Bob in comment #3 but without the key fact that it was a 7 year total being quoted.

Given the fairly strong support the renewable energy sector had from the public, the administration, and the US congress in the last two years, I think almost everyone would have to rate the industry's lobby effort as abysmally ineffective. A big-government cap and trade program was a massive overreach (and poor policy) so the renewables sector walked away with very little to show for its efforts. A more reasonable approach could have netted quite a lot last year but the moment has passed. Hopefully the industry spends less time ranting about the subsidies the fossil fuel sector gets (and stops using inflated and unreferenced numbers) and more time building broad support for reasonable policies.
Steven

High fructose corn syrup is simply a kind of corn sugar. It has the same number of calories as sugar and is handled the same by the body.

The American Medical Association stated that, "Because the composition of high fructose corn syrup and sucrose are so similar, particularly on absorption by the body, it appears unlikely that high fructose corn syrup contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose."

According to the American Dietetic Association, "high fructose corn syrup…is nutritionally equivalent to sucrose. Once absorbed into the blood stream, the two sweeteners are indistinguishable."

The Corn Refiners Association petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking that manufacturers have the option of using "corn sugar" as an alternate name for high fructose corn syrup on product labels because "corn sugar" more accurately describes the composition of the ingredient. (http://www.sweetsurprise.com/about-us/corn-sugar/petition-download)

As many dietitians agree, all sugars should be consumed in moderation as part of a balanced lifestyle.
Consumers can see the latest research and learn more about high fructose corn syrup at www.CornSugar.com.

These facts about the world, past and present, are all general anyway. I think Scott's view indicates that these conventional energy sources are subsidized far more than RE just because they are reciprocated within large politically funding based corporations. I'd feel more secure with his (Scotts) overview than that of our seeming resident nit-pickers.
How do we get some meaningful and workable RE, mainly solar, policies in play? Government or otherwise. That is the only reason I look thru these posts. I'm still looking.

ANONYMOUS
January 11, 2011

Ken,
I'm just a research scientist working in academia and not affiliated with (or funded by) anyone in the energy industry and my work is also not related to questions addressed on this site. In short, I am a disinterested reader. If I provided you with my full ID you would be able to learn nothing more than that about me. I will also remark that anonymous commentary (e.g., peer review for research journals) is a widely accepted practice in my field--where we concentrate on the merits (or lack thereof) of the remarks rather than try to read between the lines for alterior motives.

Our military has forces in many countries with the goal of maintaining peace and stability. There is no oil in South Korea, for instance, where we have a large force. Our military actions in Bosnia did not serve the interests of oil cartels. For many decades our troops in Europe served to deter Soviet aggression, .... Our troops in Saudi Arabia served many purposes, including protecting that country from being invaded by Iraq back in the early 90s. To ascribe our motivations merely to the protection of oil is a crude caricature of the situation. If we were to find an enormous supply of oil tomorrow (say sufficient for our needs for a century) our military deployments would be unchanged. In any event, if Mr. Sklar intended the numbers he cited to include military expenditures he should say so and readers could make their own judgments about the validity of such remarks.

The term "subsidy" has a rigorous meaning and tabulations by various academics, the EIA, IEA, etc., don't seem to agree with Sklar's numbers. These sources carefully define what they mean by the term. If Sklar wishes to use some alternative definition is would be appropriate to tell his readers what that is.
Steven

Steven,
Just out of curiosity, what is your day job? If I'm not mistaken you post anonymously across multiple articles on this web site. Please shine some light on who you really are and who you work for. You seem pretty dedicated to your cause.

As for the military subsidy for the oil industry, let's review the history. Osama Bin Laden said in his tapes that he attacked the US because he wanted US troops out of Saudi Arabia. Following the attack on the World Trade Center, we legitimately engaged Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But anyone who says US troops are in Saudi Arabia for some reason other than protecting our supply of oil is either a fool or a liar. I believe we were right to enter the Afghan War but the reason we are fighting there is because of oil.

Ken Stadlin

ANONYMOUS
January 10, 2011

@Bob relating to comment #3:
Wars do not constitute a governmental subsidy in any traditional sense of the word. Furthermore there are lots of reasons to be in Afghanistan and Iraq but they don't involve oil. Afghanistan, for instance, has negligible oil resources and if we went to war merely to gain access to oil (something that is purchased easily on the open market), then we would have invaded Venezuela or Canada.

The Bloomberg story you cite above is quoting the ELI study and the figure covers a 7 year range. That would make it $10 Billion per year or about a factor of 10 lower than what Sklar quotes in his article. The ELI pads up their totals with things that are clearly not subsidies to the fossil fuel industry such as LIHEAP and the strategic petroleum reserve (if the assets of the SPR were sold off, the government would actually turn a very tidy profit from the program, which is something that cannot be said of nearly any other program tagged with the label "subsidy" but the fossil fuel industry has not profited at all).

I think we should at least use the commonly accepted meaning of the term "subsidy" and cite sources for how subsidy totals are calculated if we are going to bandy about quotes of huge numbers.
Steven

ANONYMOUS
January 9, 2011

The author writes: "One senior House member recently held up an incandescent light bulb and publicly declared how he will fight their ban implying the folly of CFLs and LEDS. "

Opposing an outright ban on a product does not imply opposition to alternative technologies. Every light bulb I use is either an LED or a CFL except the one in my refrigerator, but I too oppose an outright ban on incandescents. CFL and LED bulbs have many advantages but they are not yet a total replacement for incandescents and it is rather heavy handed of the government to ban a technology for which there is sometimes no good alternative. (CFLs don't perform well with frequent cycling, come to full brightness slowly, and perform poorly at low or high temperatures or in situations where very high light quality is required; LED bulbs also have a number of deficiencies including low maximum output limitations and very high bulb prices....) If the government wanted to discourage energy inefficient lighting it could put a high tax on the bulbs and use the funds to encourage development of even better alternatives. This would shift usage patterns for most users without dramatically impacting users who have special circumstances which are still served well only by incandescents. An outright ban of incandescent bulbs was a ham fisted policy.
Steven

ANONYMOUS
January 9, 2011

The author writes: "Just because we subsidize the conventional energy industries to the tune of $60 - $135 billion per year, depending whose statistics you look at,..."

These numbers are about a factor of 10 higher than any reliable numbers I have seen unless the word "subsidy" is given a nontraditional generalization (such as counting externalities). It would be nice if the author would at least cite a source for such seemingly oversized numbers....
Steven

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Scott, founder and president of The Stella Group, Ltd., in Washington, DC, is the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Sustainable Energy Coalition and serves on the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, and The Solar Foundation. The...